Well. I'm thrilled to be thrilled that so many of you have come
now this topic is controversial. But it actually shouldn't be but
it is and it's for that reason that I want to let you know that you can read the
science yourself you don't have to trust men and we have
a lot of open minded was that IT people here and at my blog science Progress Action
dot org slash intersection science Progress Action dot org slash intersection if
you go back to the April thirteenth century sorry I didn't put it at the top again
yet but if you go back to the April thirteenth century what I just got is links to
one nine hundred thirty S.
About nonpolitical differences between liberals and conservatives. You know
published studies in the period literature so you can check some of that stuff out
yourself it's only scratching the surface of what's out there because none of these
or even psychology studies which is where the largest amount of research is but I
just want to emphasize it's real and it's also it's not my fault it's the
scientists ball. You know I used to mis understand the people
who disagree with I used to think Hey if conservatives are denying science of
global warming or they're denying science and evolution will have it must be must
be because they're following God and what their religious leaders tell their is
evolution their stem cell research there's anything having anything to do with sex
OK we've got those covered. Or you know where they're following the money dollar so
global warming anything having to do with the environment Exxon Mobil Koch brothers
we know that story to so either you know you follow the money or you follow the
religion and you understand why conservatives do that and that was really the way I
explained it in the Republican War on Science two thousand and five and I was
actually I was here talking about it then at the time we didn't mean to echo the
cover image of another popular book that was also. You know selling like hotcakes
and probably thought better than mine you can you can understand why. But that was
that was how I was explaining the problem then and these were the Bush years I
think that the throes of the era is well captured in an inadvertent quote quotation
from the former president himself so Bush was giving
a press conference following the two thousand and four tsunami which devastated so
many Pacific Rim countries and Indian Ocean countries killed so many people and
Bush got a question from
a journalist he had no idea how to answer the question was Mr President does the
United States have
a warning system in place for the purpose of the second tsunami he thought Bush had
no earthly idea so he hasn't cause any he finally tries to give an answer and the
answer he starts to give
a scientific in nature he starts to say well you know I think we might be less
vulnerable than other parts of the world to tsunamis but then he quickly adds I'm
not
a geologist as you know. And. Yeah we know we know George. Such
and Such was the Bush administration and science if we can to wrap it up and put
a bow on it that's what it was like. So that's what I was writing about then and
the crazy thing is that now Bush appears
a moderate on science. We were so outraged then when. It
seems it seems kind of seems kind of OK now almost I mean if you look at his
statements on global warming compare him to Rick Santorum I mean just think about
that so so I was I was cataloguing all the wrongs against science and I also again
I had this called whole story of why these kinds of assaults were occurring and
that causal story was about follow God or follow the money I would now call it
a political story in the sense that this is the kind of story that political
journalists tell all the time we try to explain the behavior of political actors by
looking at who in what kind of constituencies put them in power who are they
carrying water for rights with the Bush administration and the religious right it's
Exxon Mobil it's corporate America that was why there was
a war on science I said that was the political story was also environmental and not
in the sense of clean air and clean water but in the sense of nurture rather than
nature of say and that's because I was explaining this phenomenon at the surface of
politics and again the back and forth of interest groups and horse races and
campaigning and trying to get votes all the things about the political ecosystem
that we see in pocket bout but I wasn't going beneath the surface I was certainly
not going into anybody's head that's what the new book does before we get to it I
do want to say that the Republican war on science was validated in the scientific
literature recently and this is pretty awesome so
a sociologist named Gordon go shots in the American Sociological Review set out to
test what he called my thesis and if you report on science then it's pretty awesome
to find in the opening abstract of
a paper you know I set out to test apprentices moony two thousand and five. I love
that and so he found
a new database. To do it with and this is the General Social Survey they've been
asking people about their trust in institutions of writing institutions how much
you trust the leaders of the military. How much do you trust leaders of Congress
people that how much do you trust journalists people really all right but they also
say how much do you trust the leaders of the scientific community and go shot broke
it down by self described political leaning left right center conservative moderate
liberal conservative the read and as you can see they just go down and down and
down over this thirty five year period so it isn't just like everybody just trust
science it's conservatives in America who just why and they've gotten worse
why is that the case well we could give that surface level explanation which I gave
in the Republican one science but I came to feel that that was not enough and I
want to tell you about
a little bit of the research that made me think it was not enough and then I'll
tell you what I actually found so I became aware of work by Brendan Nyhan who's
a political scientist at Dartmouth he studies what he calls motivated reasoning and
here's Brendan's motivated reasoning is emotional reasoning and he sets up
experiments to test this and one of the experiments I learned about it's really
kind of jaw dropping what they do is they take liberals and conservatives and give
them a fake newspaper article containing a false that
a false fact stated in the newspaper article by someone people either respect or
don't respect like George W.
Bush and the false facts in the experiment that conservatives tend to believe in
was either you know Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or tax cuts increase
revenue to the government. The fire is the laws of economics is it. But but
this is what the the article contains these words are coming out of George W.
Bush's mouth and then they randomly manipulated whether people read
a correction so sometimes
a journalist would say this is not true which is what journalists should do but
they do too rarely and sometimes the journalists. Wouldn't do that so what happened
to the conservatives when they saw the false fact that they believed in and then
they received the correction so who's seen the movie Swingers and they want
some some of the audience will know what what you do in that movie and in blackjack
in Vegas if you get dealt its hands on eleven what he did double down that's what
the Conservatives did they double down on the fall believe that means they
increased their bet think Priest their bet on the wrong belief upon receiving
a refutation of the wrong belief OK they became more convinced of the wrong beliefs
upon receiving the factual recitations this is the kind of thing that makes you
want to go inside the brain it wasn't just this I became aware of
a phenomenon that I call in the book The smart idiot the right
smart idiot coining this phrase I want this to be in the academic literature so
what's
a smart idea I first encountered them in two thousand and eight interview data
showing the relationship between your political party affiliation your level of
education and your acceptance of scientific reality on global warming so here we
have this Pew data and we've got college grads and not college grads and we've got
going from left to right we've got Republican independents and Democrats and so
what this shows is that if you're Republicans and the higher level of education the
less likely you are to accept scientific reality. Right which is the global warming
is real and caused by humans but if you're
a Democrat or an independent precisely the opposite is the case the more you accept
science as your level of education increases so the college grad Republicans who
deny science Those are smart it is right and it isn't just on science that we find
this troubling smart idiot that this is data from John Sides of George Washington
on belief the President Obama is
a Muslim Needless to say this is not true. And it's about where the belief increase
from two thousand and twenty times down the left we've got Republicans on the right
we've got Democrats clearly the belief increases more among Republicans but again
he's broken it down by the level of education and you've got
a much steeper slope for the college grads and some college than you have for those
with high school or less smart idiot what is up with these people
all right. We need to understand. You need to understand this
phenomenon. And and
even the animals are going and I don't think that we can slowly understand this
phenomenon at the surface of politics I don't think the environmental account is
fully adequate so that's what the book is about we need something more
we see what the Republican War on Science didn't consider what our political and
journalistic classes do not want to face this very inconvenient for how they go
about doing their business is the growing body of evidence that liberals and
conservatives are just different people. Different in ways that go far beyond and
that it's here prior to their views about politics and then we're sort of pushed
or nudged to adopt certain views that they feel naturally right that's just kind of
what has. And as I went to work trying to explain the Nile reality again and why it
had gotten worse I found this evidence impossible to ignore because it was all over
the scientific literature and it was all consistent there was
a lot of different scientists doing it and eventually as
a science journalist you say hey there's really
a weight of an interlocking body of evidence here that you really can't ignore it
and this evidence suggests that our political beliefs and our factual beliefs are
at least partly rooted in
a set of personality traits psychological traits even perhaps physiological tricks
upon which people differ and so and to some extent these are inherent Now
I want to be clear at the outset that liberals and conservatives on average are
different people in simply a fact it's
a fact that is value neutral what you make of it is up to you I think it is just as
bad news for liberals in many ways as it is for conservatives because they end up
showing the two groups have different strengths and weaknesses in different areas
is the punch line but my contentions this point is that you can no longer ignore
this fact so let's let's just deal with the facts as it is it turns out that like
all important insights this is something that people have always kind of know it's
not a shocker sort of obvious and what you've got in your is
a playbill for Gilbert and Sullivan comments opera Island eighteen eighty two
they've got
a verse in here that essentially makes this point long before the body of science
that I'm talking about existed somehow in least to
a comic sense they're making precisely this point and I want to read the verse to
you in one thousand nine hundred two I think English was pronounced
a little bit differently than is now so it doesn't rhyme anymore I'm going to make
it wrong but here's here the words. Nature always does contrive that every boy and
every gal that born into this world to live in either a lean
a little liberal or else little conservative. Now
what are they talking about here you can identify liberal and conservative children
because they don't have ideology yet do that not in the sense that we like to think
of audio G. And yet there is actually in the book
a study that does longitudinal research looking at three year olds and finding
their politics twenty years later and it turns out that there is
a correlation between how they play and their politics. So the observation is
not new. But we still tend to think about politics in the blank slate sort of way
we assume that we came to our views by thinking about the issues and if we defer it
just because we you know our parents told us different things or we ended up having
different sets of interests or life experiences put me in
a different situation and hey I'd be
a conservative really the new science radically challenges that assumption
because if ideology were what people like to think it is if it were just
a set of conscious ideas that we hold about how society should be structured then
why would we find differences between liberals and conservatives in how they
organize their bedrooms and yet we do liberals are messy or.
All right you know it's true. You know it's true yeah look at that. But they've
also goes cool stuff they've got books they've got CD collections they've got
travel guides and movie tickets all right conservative you know the spaces are
cleaner and more conventional in the decorations and things like American flag
and end of ideology were just this you know conscious idea about how society should
be structured then why would liberals and conservatives differ in their preferences
for our. But they do liberals appreciate abstract art conservatives
appreciate representational art more in other words portraits landscape painting
that kind of stuff is that ideology why do they reliably differ on something like
this or why do they have different senses of humor
that they do. So it turns out the good news is that both liberals and conservatives
find Stephen Colbert funny but they do so for different reasons and there is
actually
a study of this I love I love science I love science and what it found was that you
know both groups think it's funny but liberals think he's funny because they think
he's
a parody of conservatives and conservatives think he's funny because deep down he's
really one of them. Though again you know people are
profiting things very very differently and the
a political differences go on and on in the book the last chapter we do
a new experiment I work with
a political scientist named Everett Young and in his dissertation he found
a lot of liberal conservative differences including the following he found that
conservatives were more likely to think the fans of rival for teams were just bad
people. They were more likely to want to keep germs out of their bodies.
And they were more likely to elect
a candidate to Congress to keep his or her lawn neatly edged that ideology
and it gets weirder because we've got all this cool research now to showing that
you can temporarily make a liberal into
a conservative but you don't do it by convincing them with ideas you do it through
some sort of emotional or even physiological manipulation so what works to make
a little more conservative alcohol.
Study that just came out and then I talk about in the book I love that the
scientists can say this is a we set up outside of a bar with
a political questionnaire and
a breathalyzer and they're asking people questions like How much do you agree with
the statement property rights should be absolute and they find that both groups
shift to the right liberals and conservatives both ship to the right in correlation
with what I'll call them now that's not the only way to make
a liberal into
a temporary conservative until the hangover sets and another very similar studies
found very similar effect by asking political questions near
a hand sanitizer. So that people who are being primed they notice the
hand sanitizer they're being primed to think of being clean and this had
a right worship other studies it found
a rightward shift when you put people under time pressure so how much do you like
respect authority versus care about the right just answer. That's they give more
conservative answers than if they have forced distractions you know answer this
questionnaire while you're also listening to this music and in making
a note every time they change to more conservative than and then the manipulation
that we all know makes people more conservative fear emotion of fear
on think anybody really. Seen it seen in the psychology of ideology research
explains all this very well which is why we're not going to be. So what
then is ideology and where does it live obviously not going to be in your elbow
it's going to be in your brain. So though I talk about the brain research in the
book I want to be very clear this is the new stuff this is controversial is
a lot of cow vs to go with it we don't know exactly what all of it means and if
this was all that there was out there in the scientific literature then I wouldn't
feel comfortable making
a big deal out of it too much uncertainty it turns out though this is just the
icing on the cake of all the psychological research so it's natural that they would
go look in the brain for differences in the rules and service because of all the
psychological differences we're going to discuss let me just tell you what they
found this the study of University of College College of London students and what's
funny is that the study was was asked for by Collin Firth who said you know
I wanted to find out what was wrong with the people who disagreed with me. And the
scientists actually found something. I don't endorse that statement I don't think
there's anything wrong with conservative versus liberal but there are differences
and this study found that. The differences are in the right to mingle in the
interest single it on average and it's not
a giant difference on average conservatives have more grey matter in the right to
mingle in this study which is and once OK what does that mean the middle is known
as the brains here and threats center you should be very glad that you have one it
keeps you alive you share it with other animals it's very obvious why evolution
would do such a thing because in
a situation where your life is that they make less takes over and it saves you for
trusted by running out automatic response program like fight or flight liberals had
more gray matter in this study in the anterior cingulate cortex which does
a different thing in the brain it's thought to be our error detecting region which
basically what it does is it monitors what you're doing and if you need to change.
That's the interior saying let's don't do that to something that you can imagine
you spent on
a story about how this match is liberalism and service but again I do think that
the brain stuff is uncertain but what's not uncertain is that liberals and
conservatives have different personalities and in fact that's the reason that
people are doing actual brain scan studies of what they're trying to figure out
that visible correlate of the really well established personality so to show those
personality differences I want to give you some screen shots that we showed college
students in the experiment that we ran at the end of the book and these are just
standard questions to tap into what are called the big personality traits so you
see on the screen I see myself as two then two words or phrases artistic
a highly abstract thinker and you're supposed to say how much you agree that this
describes you and you rate yourself on
a scale from one to seven and disagree strongly to
a pretty strong so they would see that and they would see many like that one was I
see myself as dependable So this is another one was I see myself as
open to new experiences complex and so it went again I don't think any of these
questions are political but they all yield reliable political differences in their
wills and conservative questions one in three liberal score higher that's
a measurement of
a trait called openness to experience question two dependable self-discipline
conservative score higher that's
a trait called conscientious. The evidence showing that these traits distinguish
liberals and conservatives is massive in this my big data dump the talk this is
a study of twelve thousand people and how big five personality traits predict their
politics so at the top and blue you've got things that tend to make the liberal
Fatah men read you've got things that tend to make you conservative you've got the
big five trait conscientiousness wanting order and structure in your life makes you
conservative and it makes you all kinds of conservative because you've got overall
conservative we've got economic conservative social conservative openness to new
experiences this is like a new ideas and new things is a powerful effect in making
a liberal and it's the biggest one that's questions one and three that you saw
agreeableness I think we all know what that is at the sort of the splits within the
rules and conservatives the bill of the conservative the less neurotic and there
will fit soldiers good news for them here as well as Senate. Extroversion
conservatives probably have more friends and fascinatingly they compare it with the
two things that we always admit influence ideology which is income and education
and sure enough you see that red you know going down having
a high level of income is
a very very strong effect in making you conservative All right we know that it's as
big as open wheel I don't like to admit the openness but we know that an education
makes you socially liberal and overall and we know that but what this is showing is
that personality is as big as or bigger than the sociological thing and people
don't like to admit that because personality partly genetic and then you get into
all that kind of stuff. But that's what the research shows So what makes you
liberal openness in education what makes you conservative money and structure why
do conservatives NY reality right there the lack of openness that's my art
that's the books are so what is opened. Here's one slogans that
appealed to the open personnel's This is why you people pay too much money for math
. Right. Openness
is about intellectual flexibility it's about tolerance of uncertainty and big you
Woody and change it means needing the thing wanting new sensations wanting novelty
wanting to experience different things it's been called neo philia. It's been
called Sensation Seeking these and it's it's an exploratory and
openness is also I would say and I think the evidence supports this strongly
a characteristic of people who opt to be inside. And sure enough the scientific
community is liberal on average and psychologically liberal on now what this what
this suggests is that across heroes and time periods and political systems there's
always this exploratory side to human nature and it leads to broadly liberal
tendencies because it's friendly to change it's friendly to new ideas it's friendly
to different kinds of people and conservatism has always been the US it's more of
a defensive ideology it's more friendly disability structure and people who need
certainty so no matter how much political systems change no matter how culture
changes there appears to be this psychological core to left right ideology that's
rooted in personality and how cool you are with new things and that explains of
course nicely why the left right term shows up again and again across history in so
many different contexts and to show that let's go back to the French Revolution
this is John John gruesome. He is often blamed for having caused the French
Revolution with his ideas and the social contract and the idea of the general will
was used to intellectually at least justify the revolution not like it was the only
cause. And I go back to the French Revolution because the French Revolution is the
time the moment when the left right spectrum was first to find based upon where you
sat in one of the many assemblies there were many assemblies during the revolution
I forget which one but anyway the people in the last wanted to overthrow the ocean
regime and the people on the right wanted to support it who was Rousseau Rousseau
was a liberal in
a different era and here's how Thomas Carlyle described his personality he could be
cooped in the garret he could be left out as
a maniac he could be left to starve like
a wild beast in his cage so he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire
that's a liberal and the seventeen on Galileo was
a liberal sixteen he couldn't help messing with authority he just it was too much
fun for him to read Galileo and you will see that read Galileo on the originals
a wonderful experience openness or the lack thereof it's
a very clear pathway to the conservative denial of reality because openness is open
right I mean and it's it's obviously if you're not open your close and openness is
inversely related to
a trait called the need for cognitive clothes which we study and this is the need
to have
a definitive answer to something so that you can stop thinking about it too not to
deal with ambiguity you not to deal with uncertainty and if you are to have
a need for closure then you tend to seize on information that supports you and then
you freeze and you don't want any more information and you limit your information
search. That's one of the key characteristics of the trait and yes need for closure
is associated with conservatism this is open this is liberalism we and the
evolutionists have been studying they have
a relatively higher need for closure on the global warming the Tea Party they say
not only are they the most factually wrong about the issue but they say they don't
need any more information about at the far low end of openness
we have
a character who doesn't question authority but respects authority thirty's
great give me a leader to follow
a strong leader who tells me what I need to think so I want to think about it so
that I'm certain and I feel secure and that character is an authoritarian and this
is
a conservative personality type much studied in literature and they tend to view the
world more in black and white not ambiguity not shades of gray black and white
right they like rigid social structures they like hierarchy someone's on top
running things usually
a man usually white usually straight. They opt the fun up for fundamentalist
beliefs because those can for certain there's research on them being more
defensive and emotional about their beliefs less likely to change their minds more
likely to use quick fire heuristics to figure out what they think and most
interesting Lee several studies on right wing authoritarians and what's called
selective exposure to information now we all do this we all consume information
that agrees with us more than information that disagrees but it seems like they do
it even
a little bit more. There was one study of Democrats Independents and Republicans
and Fox News and what it found was that the Republicans were overwhelmingly
choosing Fox the Democrats they're not they don't like Fox. But they're they're
sort of they're grazing there they're sampling
a lot of information sources where the probability that Republicans like the C.N.N.
Or N.P.R.
Report was just ten percent. So when we want to explain why conservatives today
deny reality. This is the kind of thing you gotta think about because sure enough
if you watch Fox you tend to be wrong all right Fox increases your risk of
believing fall things in controversial areas about politics we have
a lot of research on this I talk about on the book and it's clearly partly because
Fox misinforms people because here they are still in doubt about global warming and
so sure enough Fox News viewers believe more often about global warming but that's
just an environmentalist that I'm saying don't just look at the environment don't
just look at nurture look at nature because we've also got authoritarians opting in
the watching FOX So it's
a feedback and you don't really understand it just by saying Fox is misinforming
the hill they want that. They want information that makes them feel secure
and certain about what they already think but of course there's things that
liberals want to what the liberals up in says I or education
they like to go and they like to say. Look
conservatives are right conservatives are right that academia is overwhelmingly
liberal they're wrong that it makes you
a liberal I think I mean you know Rick Santorum story was sort of like you know we
sent little Johnny off to college and suddenly you know he grew his hair long and
started to smell bad and he didn't believe in God It doesn't really work like that
I think that people are naturally liberal long before they get to college and then
college seems like a perfect place for them because it's it's
a playground for people who are open to new experiences new things to get to meet
all these different kinds of people and take all these classes learn all this stuff
in any case the evidence is clear that it is liberal and so is the scientific
community. Only six percent of members of the American assistance and events in the
science or Republican. Mostly Well yeah I mean I think it's part of the nature of
things only only I'll think the question then is is it
a factual thing probably there's been somewhat of
a ship but I think it's also part of the nature of things it's probably shifted
even more but yes and then college professors are fourteen percent Republicans
based on the latest evidence liberals have
a much greater percentage of advanced degrees and conservatives. And. Neil broke
sociologist who studies that says that more so than ever before the highly educated
comprise
a key constituency for American liberalism and Democratic Party so if you go back
to my big data dump All right we've got the things that make you liberal the things
that make you conservative in the things that make you wrong about the facts.
Clearly openness is involved in our divide over reality what's true but
a lot of the effect is also going to be residing over here and openness is slowly
contributing to this higher education differential especially advanced degrees. But
also that's partly an environmental and it's gotten worse because of conservatives
attacking academia like Rick Santorum did and basically branding it as
a place that if you're conservative you don't want to say well what does all add up
to Stephen Colbert said reality has
a well known liberal bias. And
and this is this is funny but what I'm arguing is that it's also true
and it's true by the nature of things it's what you would expect.
And we conflate polls after polls that show that it's true today but I'll just give
you three sixty four percent of Republican voters in the Clinton election thought
it was not clear whether President Obama had been born in the United States sixty
four percent. Fifty five percent of authoritarians versus nineteen percent of Naam
authoritarians believe that Saddam Hussein had been directly involved in nine
eleven attacks and only eighteen percent of Republicans and Tea Party members
accepted the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by Q So there you
go this is not mean that liberals are always right all right that doesn't follow
liberals can be wrong too because everybody's emotional in their reasoning and
liberalism and service have different emotions one of the key areas for liberal
conservative difference that we did not talk about yet is moral difference and they
just have
a different sense of morality and what that means is they respond emotionally
differently to situations so the point is that if your emotions get you going down
a path you can be very biased and liberal learning them from that I just want to I
just want to show that this research actually help us predict when liberals will
devise the wrong this is one way of breaking down liberal conservative emotions and
moral and these are emotions and morals about how you think government should be
structured so you know some people are more hierarchical like the authoritarians in
other words they're but they're fine with some people really being in charge of
things and some people being subordinate to them and some people are very
egalitarian I think we should be all equal you know based on race gender sexual
persuasion all around some people are very individualistic and that means they
think
a fair system is one in which you get ahead or you fall behind on your own merits
and there's nobody there to help you that's the way it should be so people are very
communitarian in the sense that they believe that it takes
a village we need to protect everybody from unfairness that's in our society and
that that that is
a proper role for government. So not surprisingly Republicans live up here their
hierarchical and individual Democrats live down here their communitarian in the
gallows here this predicts when Democrats will be wrong vaccinations.
If you're egalitarianism you're suspicious of large concentrations of power because
it creates inequality in our society and a corporation is
a large concentration of wealth so if you and if you're communitarian your
suspicions of harm specially to the weak it's children so if you get
a false narrative about
a corporation harming children it's in your emotional sweet spot and you're likely
to believe that we've got
a false narrative that's been promulgated over less ten years about vaccines being
dangerous to children I know this is affected us here recently
a lot. And liberals are inclined to believe this kneejerk emotional way so liberal
can clearly be wrong
a lot of other issues live down there like nuclear power fracking anything that
a corporation is allegedly done if it's a false charge about
a corporation liberals are inclined to believe that what makes them more right in
the long run in these cases is that they have to deal with the scientific community
who are part of their psychological you know members of our in the sciences don't
don't put up with this crap all right in their areas of expertise and eventually
they shoot it down that causes liberal psychological pain to fight with them
because liberals are people who love universally loved scientists and you think in
the same way express yourself with a lot of nuance
a lot of uncertainty if it OK So that's that's the saving grace but it isn't that
liberals can't be wrong. So that let me conclude
a couple punches science describes reality human beings are really good at screwing
this up we know that but I'm suggesting that you know some human
beings maybe
a little bit more than others face the sun the evidence before us don't.
We still need to communicate about science need to communicate facts we need to get
across what's true but we need to know what the source of resistance is what we're
dealing with and we need to study what we're dealing with and there's no stopping
this research on ideological differences and how they affect how we use and how we
process it the nation in fact is proceeding apace Here's the political physio
physiology laboratory door and University of Nebraska Lincoln now they're putting
liberals and conservatives in I tracker devices OK where they watch where your eyes
go when you go to collage of images liberalizing that sort of eyes do different
things automatically they they go to different places conservatives look at the
things that are scary and the things that are disgusting and like somebody eating
worms right and the liberals are all looking at the happy bunny rabbit.
These are uncontrolled differences. And that's is something we're going to have you
know as more and more research comes in the something we're just going to have just
the reality is. So in conclusion I want to leave you with some words of wisdom
from
a profound philosopher Yoda Yoda said you must
learn what you have learned. When it comes to why the people deny science why
people not facts why we can't persuade people who differ from us that is exactly
the situation or THANK YOU
THANK
YOU. My intelligent friends voted for George Bush but.
I was wondering if there was anything that influenced the conservatives to become
temporarily liberal it's
a great question. So surprisingly there is less research on the. Or it's
hard to show I mean one of the studies on these temporary ships that it's far
easier to make a liberal and conservative than make
a conservative but I suspect that you know one of the traits of liberalism is
seeing different sides of an issue and saying it's complicated and so if you find
a way to do that kind of intervention then it's probably going to have that.
Your research accounts for geographic differences in. Conservatives
this state has
a very market divided between East and West Yeah so that the red
state blue state phenomenon there's research and eyes on the book showing that this
doesn't just reflect political differences that reflect
a personality that. But this is I'm not making the argument that like literally
different reasons the United States are growing different people I mean that might
be true to some extent but we know that people are selecting into different kinds
of regions in which to live right and you know we know that liberals are going to
Cambridge Massachusetts you know that's like where they want to be that was the
university there all right so I'm
a liberal grew up in the south of New Orleans Louisiana and I always just knew that
I wanted to end up in the north. It's
a natural thing so I think that people people are following their personality to
places other people like them and that is leading America to be incredibly
polarized it's one of the many things that's making America more.
Possible things that might make conservatives more liberal could one of them be we
. This is this is I mean are tapping in on the.
Can we can we ethically do that Sunny I don't. I don't know I haven't seen that
study. I think it be interesting. I can tell yeah.
Sorry Hi there so I have two two questions one your driver
a lot of the none of her men were from Georgia or in personalities how much of his
it's tied into child rearing and you know in some ways the fights over
a forgery and less authoritarian child are and then the other question that. I mean
when I'm thinking of the political organizer I'm always art you can organize them
or how can you pull them over and so the work that I do are from points I've seen
people amazing example in a book of mine size of who is
a vice president of the national news angelical getting converted on climate change
by a prominent evangelical It was also
a kind of really and then coming back and bringing people like Rick Warren taking
the arc of regard climate scientists and converting some of them so they're using
their same framework which gives him stability and trust the things and then the
what's in your over saying oh actually this is God's creation we're talking about
different interests. You bet so the first question is about authoritarianism
and Yes Well in our political views are definitely rooted in our views of the
family and this is something that George laid off as I'm saying and he's one of the
pioneers in this area and it turns out that the modern measure of authoritarianism
scientists of refined this because there were scientific problems with the way it
was originally measured back when Dorner wrote disorder in personality now it's
about childrearing they just ask things like what kind of child would you like to
raise in obedient one or creative one right and that turns out to be
a gigantic political difference and also correlates with all these traits like
faith in rigidity and seeing the world in black and white so that's how we measure
it and then your real question is what should we do I mean should we convert them
or should we beat them politically. I know it's not an end or but and you're right
that if you understand conservatives morality and if you understand their styles of
information processing So for example I mean they're going to like more definitive
statements and not this wishy washy wimp wimpy liberal nuance you know that just
kind of makes them gag. So if you know that you can be more sports wasted sitting
service but the but given the current political situation in which everybody is
incredibly polarized and there polarized by information sources so that I don't
think any you know liberal communication that's really savvy that appeals to
conservative values can offset Fox News OK it's
a much bigger megaphone it's hard to imagine gree there been forays you know
talking to conservative values to get them to care about climate change but
honestly I really think that this research is probably better aimed at moving the
middle than moving conservatives because this research says that conservatives are
hard and. So strategically I think that's wiser and. When you talk about the middle
you're looking at people who are probably many of them psychologically somewhat
blended in that they have both of these traits so that if you're aware that not
everybody is a liberal who can make up their mind you know or are talking
a lot of nuance and then you can adjust your styles in such
a way that you appeal to the center as well as and then you just might that might
be your winning strategy so I think this research is best and that it seems
that there's
a strong appeal to narrative mythology. Especially in regards to the conservative
point. And the reason I bring that up is in regards to quote warming because it
seems that the evidence and scientific the scientific evidence is neglected because
there is
a narrative with this mythology that is repeated over and over and over again and
they tie it to Paul Ehrlich they tie it to limits to growth and that mythology
seems to be very strong in terms of dealing with the scientific evidence out there
is that is that part of the research or yeah that's we're on this. Figure for that
question so I think everybody has a narrative I mean the Left has a narrative of
a big corporation doing some kind of environmental or human health wrong that's
a narrative and it's
a narrative that appeals to left values so when you're talking about global warming
as
a narrative that appeals to the right values and particularly individuals and that
narrative is basically socialist pinkos paper if I can try to
put my the are trying to take control of our government our lives and we're strict
our freedom and our choices and this phony science of global warming is something
they cooked up so they could seize control of the economy and crush our freedom and
so as an individual it's
a narrative and they see the science through that lens and that leads them to
distrust scientists and especially the environmental regulators who are going to be
using the science to they say interfere in the economy there is
a very strong. Given you know oh it's well these are these are deep seeded
emotional beliefs and people are straining all the evidence about the issue through
them so every time they see anything about global warming it's this narrative is
basically embedded then they're going to tag all the information with the emotions
that are already associated with the issue for them. OK And so it's getting
stronger and stronger basically and they you know global warming is now viewed as
phony science that liberals made up to take your gun away I mean seriously that's
that's kind of the way of thinking about it and that's why it's so emotional.
My question is like you know I'm always in two. Battling
crazy phony science Well liberal or conservative like pseudo science like global
warming. And VAX in the specially in creationism and stuff but.
It's like. We can actually do them that leg
like sheep you know. Like because I know there's
a lot of conservatives and stuff trying to get laws passed of the. Various
scientific controversies Corden quote in classrooms and that's that's not good
but you know do you think do you think that if science was actually taught better
to children that this stuff wouldn't happen as much OK so I don't think education
is education is important and valuable I don't think it's because all this we saw
the smarted that So you know clearly and the reason it doesn't fix it is because
you know emotion critical thinking basically if you have
a strong belief system then you can see flaws in the reasoning of other people but
you can't say you're wrong and that's what all the research shows I talk about just
biased reasoning before I get into liberal conservative the. So given that that's
the case if we wanted to make people reason better than we would be teaching them
like Jed I feel they would be teaching them how to like withdraw from yourself and
have no stake in things and it would be kind of them and we don't really do that we
just we just sort of think that if we teach them the rules of logic it'll work but
no they just apply the rules of logic collectively. In order to support their
belief in the pact that you face these oppositional with their belief that that's
the human animal it doesn't mean that mine don't change because minds do change and
we see it all around the but people change for emotional reasons. So what this
means is that if you want to change them and it will be hard you don't just hit
them with evidence because they're all configured to refute it and not agree with
it but if you change their feelings then they'll process things differently so
that you know so that the whole scientific thought persuasion turns out to be not
a very good persuasion in any area where people have
a stake that's basically with the research I was thinking about how the
conservative personality type and the liberal personality type are both very good
methods in different environments for survival if you look at the stone ages yes
you probably very well off to mistrust your environment. To avoid attacks and likes
to close the water sources and I was just wondering if there's any research on like
if there's forces to make humanity become more conservative or more liberal I would
think you'd become more liberal because we don't have to worry about being and I
guess that's how it's for anyone except ourselves but I was wondering if there's if
there's in the whether there's
a long term trend towards you know every people are obviously thinking along these
lines. They're thinking that this you know basically it's called approach avoidance
. You know where the liberals exploring that's the approach and the conservatives
the funding and the the invoice and strategy is one study where they find there was
a conservatives doing this when they're playing
a video game that's how they're playing the game so yeah and you can see how both
are strategies that would make sense in the survival sense but the question then is
wired we have both and why are they somehow distributed on equally in people in
correlation with personalities and what is evolution of the say about that and the
answer is I don't know. And the answer is the scientists don't have
a clear answer based on what I'm seeing because
a lot of things that we are today are not necessarily the result of natural
selection because natural selection does
a specific thing and some things happen just because of the draw and it could be
that we just there's just noise there's just variability in who we are and that
ends up getting distributed and it has political implications but evolution in the
. Thinking that the forces allow us to right now are probably different than
what a lot of we also reflects a bill right I mean and so to some extent based on
a situation you can activate a more conservative style or activate
a more liberal style mean and it makes
a lot of sense that we would be adaptable. So my brother was like
a Sarah pail and Rush Limbaugh type conservative who has now divorced me and
unfriended me and blocked me it's obvious you he has and he won't take my calls and
that was you know as of last year and. It's over politics and it culminated last
year do you have any tips for how I can reach out to you and.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I mean the only way that I don't think this
is rare I think. It happened
a couple of other. I think that the only way to open somebody up is
different from you politically is you know not to try to argue issues with them but
to emphasize all the things that you still share. And for you that's more than just
somebody different politically from you so it's all about common ground. And
shared values and I would think you would have
a lot of those still trying to come down to whether it's actually nature or nurture
and you know there's
a diagram of what areas are triggered more predominately in the brain and you
mentioned some research about how how young these correlations exist
down to play I mean is there
a which the correlations drop away or when they start to become more pronounced
leading to the answer to the question Is someone actually born that way or is it
nurture but nurture at a very young age. That's
a great question we don't have full certainty nature and nurture is not
a dichotomy it's always both. So you know if I. Have the genes of the
seven one and I go and I'm don't need
a good diet when I'm growing up then I'm not going to be
a basketball. OK So that's that's the nature nurture right there is
a very simple equation. The genetic studies which are actually you know there's
a new paper out just this week that problematize and it's finding it's finding some
of the same results but it's casting you know it's saying that either the Quinn
study methodology is too strong or too weak our methodology yields also genetic
differences but it's not as many. In the twin study methodology which is basically
the way that they've always done liberal conservative differences actually it's
percents on where your differences are coming from and it puts about forty percent
on genes that ten percent of the shared family environment that you have when
you're growing up about that the percent of everything that happens like that you
leave the nest that's what they do but you know do you accept twin studies and I
talk about them in the book and so you know geneticists are going to be doing
a lot of cool stuff to explain how genes are making us and it's going to it's
pretty clear that genes are only playing an important role but exactly how big. And
exactly how that works with experience I mean that is a that is
a huge complex area of research where I think in ten twenty years we'll have some
really good answers OK so that's
a liberal answer to your question all right so thank you very much.